Protecting Our Casuals: Gear

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Just use the 'industry standard' values here, @VmanGman .

I'll try to find the precise source of these numbers for you if it turns out that detractors reject them, but:

Casual: 2-3 hours, 2-3 times a week, with those blocks normally not all in one, or heavily organized.
Hardcore: 3.5+ hours almost every day, usually with organized guild or group events

You can split further, into 'Time Casual', and 'Time Hardcore', 'Challenge Casual', 'Challenge Hardcore', but it's often a correlation based on how many organized events and the difficulty/reward ratio of those events that they can do. This isn't a good way to deal with it in more diverse games usually, though, because most players who spend 3.5+ hours will usually be strong enough in SOME aspect that if they have social bonds they can leverage that time-power through their influence on others. (e.g. crafters affecting economies or guild strength without ever being able to attend events).

In general, in my experience, other games are designed logarithmically, each 'tier of power' requires 2x as much investment as the previous, until you hit the 'cap' of 16h per day' (you know there are such people) at which point the differentiators are group organization and luck. Depending on the game, those factors are more important than time spent, as well. Up to the individual how they feel about that.

So, an 'inbetween' player, who plays in organized events with guild daily for 2h, would be one tier of 'strength and gear' below a 'hardcore' player who plays in organized events with guild daily for 2h and then crafts for 2h, assuming other factors of guild strength and organization being equal (you can even assume that they are in the same guild and attend the same types of events, and the 'hardcore' player just has the extra 2h for focused personal Artisan gains)

Obviously my experience with this progression is biased because I probably just quit all the games where 'playing twice as much made you 5x as strong', so don't take that one as having any meaning, throw in your own.

I'll find the studies to back up the numbers for you sometime today though.

You don't even have to read the studies, Josh Strife Hayes will read out the summaries for you (beginning of the video up to about 3 minute mark.

If you want to use the studies for knowledge vs not knowledge, i.e. the type of Hardcore that I am vs the type of Hardcore that the most casual player in my group is, I suggest using the basic easy-search one:

https://peterhancock.ucf.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2016/03/Lakhmani_Oppold_Rupp_Szalma_Hancock_2015Knowledge-distribution-on-MMO-players.pdf

If you want to go in deep, for some reason, start here:

https://quanticfoundry.com/notes-on-phase-1-sample/

Formalize the stance using the data any way you like @VmanGman

Note that according to my understanding of Ashes, assuming logarithmic gear tiers, I personally have no concerns or complaints:

16h a day players (I think it's fair to call these people no-lifers, right? Even they shouldn't be offended at this?) would have Legendaries if lucky, and otherwise probably be BiS for whatever they are trying to do, across multiple activities .

8h a day players will probably still be BiS for multiple activities, which may or may not be PvP according to the discretion of the player.

4h a day players (still in 'Hardcore' territory) will be BiS for their specialized activities, and probably one tier lower, maybe 2 tiers lower in PvP.

2h a day players (dropping out now) will probably be BiS for one slot unless their guild values them, one tier lower even for their specialized activity, almost certainly 2 tiers lower for 'PvP gear spec'.

1h a day players (led by strong guild leaders) will probably not be prioritized for BiS in any slot, but get hand-me-downs from anyone higher to put them 1-2 tiers lower than the Hardcore, which in Ashes is around 6-12% I believe.

Intermittent players (I won't even try to quantify the capability of players who play less than 1h a day but somehow play every day) are likely to be wearing 2 tiers below (i.e. Average gear) that they still earned themselves, or got as hand-me-downs if in a guild.

Guildless intermittent players (not even enough time to play the economy game) will be the ones who have below Average gear. 'What they can scrounge up' with no guildmates to give them hand-me-downs or what they can buy cheap because no one else wants to hold onto it. Bonus chance for this due to having to maintain the gear.

So at this point, you'd have to worry about 8h a day players (full timers) stomping on 1h a day players and Intermittents. This seems like a valid concern based on what you're arguing, but the problem you're trying to address isn't solved by anything within the gear system usually, and Ashes is within parameters.